A new species was sighted at the Cannes film festival this year. At first, everyone was foxed: who was this lovely creature scampering up the Croisette? What was its genealogy? On the final weekend, critic Leslie Felperin of Variety nailed it: what we had witnessed, she wrote, was the arrival of the "arthouse stud monkey". Male leads who were well-groomed, sensitive, cultured and endlessly selfless in bed starred in three of the 20 films in competition. Was it any coincidence that they also happened to be the only three films directed by women?

First up was Michael Fassbender, in Andrea Arnold's Fish Tank. From the moment the star of Steve McQueen's Hunger ambled on to the screen - shirt off, Kerry accent lilting, generously nurturing the heroine's ambition to be a dancer - there was no doubt who was the siren here. Most of the cast lusted after him, and so too did Arnold's camera, circling him restlessly, desperate for a glimpse of those dimples. Jane Campion's Bright Star went further: Ben Whishaw's John Keats was the Romantic poet as dreamboat new man - great with kids, fond of flowers, attractive even in illness.

But it was Sergi López who proved the ultimate stud monkey. In Spanish director Isabel Coixet's Map of the Sounds of Toyko, López plays David, a Catalan wine seller living in Japan and having a passionate fling with Ryu (Rinko Kikuchi), a solemn fishmonger (speciality: tuna). David is bereft following the suicide of an ex, for which he misguidedly blames himself. He's flirtatious, open, a chatterer. His job allows him to decently purr "Everything can be sensual" at regular intervals. Not once do we see him pursuing his own sexual pleasure; instead, he is devoted to fulfilling Ryu's every desire.

So it's something of a challenge to sit through the film and not emerge as infatuated as Coixet evidently is. "Yes, Isabel loves me," smiles López, whose previous roles include the homicidal psychopath in Harry, He's Here to Help, a bloodthirsty fascist in Pan's Labyrinth, and a violent crook in Dirty Pretty Things. "Though she also loves Rinko, and Toyko. When you're filming you can feel how much she wants to be with you; you can hear her breathing."

Coixet has made no bones about the fact that her film is directorial wish-fulfilment writ large. "The most feminine element of the film is David," she told journalists in Cannes. "And I'm very proud of that. When you're making a film you don't leave your own personality at home. This is my way of expressing my own fantasies."

López, for whom she wrote the film, had no problem with such lavish objectification. After all, it makes a change from the arthouse baddie he usually plays. "It's wonderful to have a woman's perspective on the sex," he says. "Often in a script, it just says, 'They make love like they never made love before.' And you think, yes, but how? And why didn't they make love like this before? The sex here doesn't just feel like it's from a woman's perspective - it feels real. When I think of masculinity I think of something solid, and static. It's better if the world can be more feminine - a little bit more sweet."

That's the other thing about these three films: not one sticks to a conventional movie structure. It isn't simply the introduction of the stud monkey; it's the fluid pacing, the heady emphasis on sound and touch, the untethered plot and the woozy vibe. Most crucially, it's putting a woman into what are traditionally men's shoes.

So, while the heroine of Coixet's film does spend much of her working life in a pinny, she also freelances as a contract killer. López is the vulnerable target she falls for, and it's he who yearns to have children and drink wine in front of the telly. In Fish Tank, Fassbender's role is chiefly as a pawn in the mother/daughter catfight that is the main focus of the film. In Campion's Bright Star, the lion's share of screen time goes not to Keats but to Fanny Brawn. Whishaw is essentially gorgeous background - a pinup who talks back, and beautifully. To some, this might seem perverse. But that's the problem with a stud monkey: let him evolve too much and he might just turn into a man.

About this article

Catherine Shoard hails a new film hero - the 'arthouse stud monkey'

This article appeared on p22 of the G2 section of the Guardian
on Wednesday 3 June 2009.
It was published on
the Guardian website
at 19.01 EDT on Wednesday 3 June 2009.
It was last modified at 08.01 EDT on Wednesday 11 June 2014.
It was first published at 19.07 EDT on Wednesday 3 June 2009.